Vinnie Vidivici
nytheatre.com review by Pamela Butler
August 23, 2010
" ...I came... I saw.... I flunked Latin I."
So says Vincent Santoro, creator, director, and performer of this delightful hour of storytelling, narrated in many voices and accompanied by beats of the drums. At The Club at La MaMa, there's a snack bar serving beer wine, chips, and you can sit at a table by the stage to enjoy the show.
Vincent Santoro is a heavyweight drummer, in the sense that he plays with the best. He just got off the road with Mary Chapin Carpenter's Summer Tour and is here in New York for the Fringe Festival before he and his wife Barbara and son Joey head home to Nashville, Tennessee.
The producer of the show, Thea Hardigg, has worked with Santoro in the past. She directed him in her award winning road movie So Long Goodbye. Here we are treated to Vinnie telling stories from his childhood, memories of slender means and lots of helpful relatives. He had a particular problem with his older brother—but he did finally go off to school, a great relief for Vinnie.
The stories of an Italian American childhood in America seem at odds with Vinnie's on stage rock look: shaved head, pony tail and goatee and in what looked like an ancient tee. But even rockers grow up, still playing, still great, but not kids any more. The even sounds of the drum, the breath and beat, the whoosh of a brush, are a great complement to the narration.
Vinnie said he was telling childhood stories on Monday, but he has others. You might hear something completely different and some virtuoso drumming.
